Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

A couple months ago, someone asked "Why isn't there a twitch.tv for programming?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8039299

I believe my answer still holds true. Programming isn't as well-suited for constant live streaming because:

a) The viewer can't leave the stream in the background (as you would television)

b) A very large amount of dead air where nothing is happening and the streamer needs to fill dead air. (even worse if you have to debug something)

c) It would require a very optimized overlay that makes it easy to see the code at sub-1080p resolutions. (almost no screencast even now does this because it impacts usability)

d) The presenters need to be socially engaging; given the demographics of people who are the best coders, this is not a guarantee.

In the meantime, I've done some code streaming Hello World PoCs just for fun, with a few optimizations to solve the problems above. They haven't gone well (need to fix a sound desync issue) but there is potential: http://youtu.be/DWRI_7HgZwk

Well yeah a lot of programming can be dead air, but consider:

* Some programming, like quick bursts of activity after an epiphany, can be very lively. These moments can be surfaced to viewers if the right signals are used.

* It can be a million people with an audience of 10, not just 10 people with an audience of a million. It could be useful for real-time distributed projects to have collaborators' streams open. Or track a favorite open-source project whenever the developer is working on it.

* It would also work well if scheduled and with a specific task in mind, especially if the programmer is a "rockstar". (Similar to Notch's recent performance.) e.g. "7pm-8pm PST Linus will begin Git forking refactor". As a performance, could also be used for code walkthroughs instead of actual coding.

* Even though it's live-streamed, it can be still be packaged into highlights later, and the best way to do it is to have the raw content available for anyone to remix it. Different work can also be curated together to highlight a common theme.

* Regarding video quality, that's an easy fix given that most programming remains text-based. The obvious solution is to capture high-level terminal content rather than just plain old video. A coding session could then even be curated into posts like http://asciicasts.com/.

It's interesting to see different people's workflows and mindsets, so I think it's worth pursuing this, and it could be very popular with the number of people learning to code right now.

Yes, I agree that some of those answers currently hold true. But what's to stop them changing?

I feel most of those issues you mentioned can either be solved with technological solutions (pause, rewind, ffwd a stream) or with streamer education and practice (talking through your thought process, increasing font sizes).

I do, however, have lots more to research and understand before I can be confident there are solutions to all the problems currently faced.

I agree with most of these points, but there is one niche where this could make a lot of sense: programming contests (e.g. topcoder, google codejam). These are very similar to sports to begin with, and it can be quite interesting to watch somebody implement a moderately complex algorithm in 15 minutes.

I concur wholeheartedly. I've watched people code on streams during game jams and even then I was quickly bored to tears. Most coding is even less exciting than coding games.

Some tasks just aren't well suited to streaming, and coding is one of them.

I guess we just need to remix it with http://www.hypermasher.com/hyperlapse

I've watched plenty of stream and I agree sometimes there can be dull moments. The same could be said for any type of live stream though. Often this is down to the streamer rather than the subject matter.

Watching quill18 fix a bug and be visibly excited about his code working (raising his hands and shouting something along the lines of 'fuck yeahhhh') during the last Ludum Dare was such a warming experience which mimicked the internal monologue I often have when a piece of code finally works as I expected it too.

There's obviously a demand for people who want to watch coding steams, my biggest challenge is ensuring there are people who can offer streams worth watching.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com